Time(')s (Up) Square

I'm usually disappointed that New Years TV shows are dominated by such lightweight pop.  But it occurs to me that it's appropriate for them to have one-hit-wonders on them. If you think of the show as a celebration of the past year, it makes sense to celebrate it with artists who will be forever associated with this year. And the artists themselves will want to appear on the shows. Aside from needing the exposure, they need to convince themselves that their careers will in fact survive into the new year. I have to admit that a part of me expected Psy to disappear in a puff of smoke as soon as the Times Square ball hit bottom.

Perhaps these broadcasts should be entirely celebrations of the ending year. Not just the musicians we won't be seeing next year, but the products, trends, etc.  Bring in late night talk show hosts to do one last round of jokes about the easiest targets of the past year, then let them go forever. 

Now, Winfield Probably Just Wants a Nice Quiet Retirement

Recently, Sportsnet celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the Blue Jays' 1992 World Series win by replaying all six games of that series.  Desperate for something to balance all the College football on TV, and with no hockey and most channels dominated by repeats or marathons, I found myself actually watching a lot of it.  Partly it was nostalgia, partly fascination at how much the sport and television has changed.

So here are the some of the interesting things that I noticed during the 1992 World Series rerun:

• There isn't much advertising in the stadium, just a few Labatts ads in the Skydome.  Even stranger, some of the ads in Atlanta are for Marlboro, one of them complete with the Marlboro Man.  Another is for Fuji Film.  Remember film?
• Where are all the tattoos?
• Even after all these years, it sounds wrong to hear American announcers call Manny Lee, "Manuel" Lee
• For that matter, I can't believe they only have two announcers.  Where's the gratuitous roving audience reporter?
• The SkyDome looks totally different when it's full.
• Brett Lawrie is the spiritual successor to Kelly Gruber. To answer one comment I saw on Twitter, I think he's the one that will follow Gruber and Todd Stottlemyre in the Jays' tradition of cutting his chin in an ungraceful slide in the World Series.
• What's with the giant graphics?  Were our TVs really that small then?  And so plain looking; My phone could do better.
• Speaking of which: nobody in the stands is on a phone.  How are they telling their friends they're on TV?
• And I have to wait for them to put up the score?  What's wrong with leaving it in the corner of the screen?  Oh, it would be too tiny on their itsy-bitsy TVs.
• All the stats are just the simple ones I learned as a child.  Where's the WHIP and OPS?
• I still can't believe how easy Devon White makes centre field look.  Or how small a bat looks in Dave Winfield's hands.
• That pale green Astroturf really looks bad.
• Since a lot of the people in sports audiences aren't up to the latest style to begin with, everyone in the stands looks even more out of date than twenty years.  There wasn't nearly as much flannel as you would expect for the early nineties.
• It's been a while since I heard anyone marvel at how modern the SkyDome is the way the commentators did.
• On the other hand, calling it the SkyDome doesn't really seem that odd, which I take as a measure of how the Rogers Centre moniker hasn't fit.
• I still can't believe how into the game Jane Fonda gets.  You'd think she and Ted Turner would have lasted.
• Atlanta's old stadium looks, um, "short".  I've become used to baseball stadiums having three decks of seats and a wall of luxury boxes.
• The transitions between replays and live shots (with a sort of zoom-in diamond shape) looks like something out of the seventies.  I expect computer-generated baseballs rolling across the screen and exploding or something.
• I'd forgotten what great moustaches baseball used to have.  Sid Bream and Jack Morris, we miss you.
• It's a little depressing to watch it already knowing which players wouldn't be back the next year.
• A part of me can't believe they won it again.

Fiscal Bluffs

I haven't really kept up on the Fiscal Cliff issue.  So I guess I'm not really that different from most journalists.  There seems to be a lot of dumbing down and summing up going on.  And by that, I mean jumping to the worst possible outcome.  Many aren't even bothering to say it could dip the U.S. into recession, and just saying that the cliff will cause a new recession.  Most frustratingly, by saying it that way, it means they'll likely be right.

Here's what I think is happening here:  The (Republicans/Democrats) have spent years saying that it's very important to have (low taxes/government programs).  God forbid those other guys will get in power and (raise taxes through the roof/slash spending to the bone) - that would cripple the economy.  Of course, it's true that in order to give the public (low taxes/government programs) it'll require (less spending/high taxes).  But don't worry, that's not a problem; in fact, it may even be a good thing, since (rich people have money to burn/poor people have become dependent).

If either party had total control, they'd do something that a lot of people wouldn't like, but they'd be assuring us that it's not that bad.  But now we have a situation where the terrible thing that each party dreads is going to happen, but without the reassurance of the other.  For instance, Republicans have long said that the welfare state should be reduced.  Well now it is being reduced, but rather than tell us what a good thing that is, they're distracted by the prospect of higher taxes.  Likewise, many Democrats have suggested letting the Bush tax cuts expire.  Well, they're about to, but they can't celebrate, because many unemployed people are about to lose their benefits.  If only both parties would see the glass as half full.

Whatever your political affiliation, you have to realize that some big changes to the American budget are needed, at least assuming your mathematical affiliation is with reality.  Great news!  Those changes are about to happen.  Once the public's expectations have been readjusted, we can refine things to popular tastes later.  But for now, forcing a big shift in perspective could do us a lot of good.

Smartphoning It In

I was going to write a post here, but there seems to be an embargo against producing any new content in a communication medium this time of year.  One is only allowed to produce retrospectives and best-of lists.  What am I supposed to do, my ten most obscure post titles?

Well, they do have some stats here at blogger let's see what we can do.  Here are my most popular posts of the year (and thus all time):

1. Keep Calm and Something Ironic
2. Prodigious Firestarters
3. I Think You Can Read 'Bout Dyson
4. Katy Perry doesn't get Demographics
5. Beeb Fever
6. Olympic Butthole Surfers
7. How Not to Look Foolish on the Internet
8. Jason Lets Slip His Quaint Media Experience
9. Cracking the Maclean's Code
10. Hockey Night in the Eastern Bloc

Pa-Rum-Pum-Pum-Pu-u-u-u-um

I used to feel sorry for Justin Bieber.  Sure, I hate commercialized pop driven by tween girls' hormones as much as anyone, but he doesn't deserve the level of vitriol he's received. 

At least that's what I thought until I heard his version of "Little Drummer Boy" during today's basketball games.  Look, Bieb, inserting extra notes to show off your vocal abilities Mariah-Carey-style is merely annoying, but that's if you can actually hit all those extra notes.  Pointlessly meandering notes in a really artificial auto-tuned voice is neither entertaining nor impressive.

I have new respect for David Bowie and Bing Crosby.

DJ X-Mass

Supposedly the Saturday before Christmas is the busiest shopping day of the year, even busier than Black Friday in the U.S.  Fortunately - and uncharacteristically - I finished early and was able to avoid it all together.  But there's one thing you can't avoid unless you complete your shopping a month-and-a-half early: Christmas music.  Of course it's not just in stores, it's also on much of the radio dial and many TV commercials too.  For the Christmas overloaded like me, the non-stop music is the hardest thing to take.  I realize I can't stop it, so here are some tips on how we can make the Christmas tunes a little less annoying:

Go Easy on the PC Winter Carols

A lot of songs we associate with Christmas actually never mention it:

• Winter Wonderland 
• Marshmallow world
• Jingle Bells
• Sleigh Ride

So these songs are a safe solution at PC civic events and in stores holding hopes of sucking religious minorities into the buying frenzy.  But like most attempts to genericize Christmas, it annoys many while fooling no one.

Look Deeper into Back-Catalogues

Just about any well-known artist has recorded a Christmas song at some point in their career, even if they haven't gone the full Christmas cash cow- I mean, "album".  For instance, last year a number of radio stations seemed to remember U2's "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)"  So it's worth a look.

Try Tangentially Christmassy Songs

The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" is not technically about Christmas, but it does mention it.  All the music from the Peanuts Christmas special is just instrumental, but it's become associated with the holiday.  And if you're filling a month of songs, you're going to have to consider that close enough.

Never Play "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time"

It's modern, light, and by one of the most beloved musicians in the world, so it seems like a marketing dream.  Too bad it's such an annoying song.  I don't like to exaggerate, but this song may just cancel-out Paul McCartney's positive contributions to music.

Never Play "Santa Baby"

That's such a creepy song.  For one thing, it's sexualizing Santa, a concept I felt dirty just typing.  If you think about it, that song is exactly the thing "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" is making fun of.  We don't need to hear about how much mommy wants to kiss Santa Claus.  The fact that the song has such a dated feel only accentuates the feel of listening to your mother's love song.

Might I Have Some Time Alone

Today, many a media personality has been pointing out - with varying levels of deadpan irony - that we are still here.  That small subset of Mayans who believed the world would end today were wrong.  What a surprise. 

This non-story about a story that we knew would not be a story might have you lamenting all the time wasted on this issue.  But think of this: we're about to start 2013.  Yes, a year with a famously unlucky number in it and I haven't heard a thing about it.  The whole world's superstitious population has been successfully distracted by the end-of-the-world fear.

But what caught my attention today was the stories about the descendants of the ancient Mayans celebrating.  Even though most Mayans didn't really expect an apocalypse, it was still the end of one of the cycles of their calendar; I suppose that's the equivalent of the turn of the millennium.  To them it was a great moment of reflection and rebirth.  It might have been nice if the rest of us could have participated in that celebration, but no, we advanced nations were too focused a prophecy of disaster that hardly anyone ever believed.

That's Great It Starts With An Earthquake

Like most people, tonight I'm busy building a shrine to the Mayan god Q'uq'umatz.  So here's an end-of-the-world essay I published on Facebook three years ago:

I'm a pessimist, so I'm not really shocked by all the problems of the world. And yet there's something not-quite-right about what's going on now. I finally decided that it's not that the world's going down the toilet that's worrying me, it's just that I didn't think it would play out anything like this.

Swine Flu

Disease is really not how I pictured civilization ending. A disease generated amongst livestock as part of intensive farming techniques? That's just not homo sapiens style. Nuclear war, ill-advised genetic manipulation, maybe even pissing off a powerful alien species — that's the sort of thing I was expecting. Placing the products of wisdom in the hands of the foolish or emotional: that's the humanity I know. But dying of disease was more fitting for the Martians in War of the Worlds — not us. On the other hand, we're about to face millions of deaths and we're more concerned that calling it "swine flu" will hurt pig farmers; that is an appropriately silly touch.

But it still doesn't seem right. As a committed cynic, I always pictured that — however we manage to screw ourselves — I'd be able to bitterly turn to the person next to me and say, "told you so." As it stands, a Muslim or Jew will say that to me.

Pigs: okay, maybe they deserve it. Did you know that after primates, marine mammals, and elephants, pigs are the next most intelligent animals? So the fact that we eat them in such numbers violates even our usual flimsy division between pets and food. And sure, we forced them to live unnaturally in their own filth, then made them the paragon of uncleanliness because they live in their own filth, so there's plenty of poetic justice here. But I still would have bet on killer bees or tsetse flies.

The Environment

As a child looking into the future, it always seemed like the only way we'd avoid environmental disaster would be to gain a new awareness of our place in the world and our responsibility for the ecosystem and our effect on it. That awareness seems to be an all-or-nothing proposition: you either notice and do something, or ignore it and go on as you always have. So I figured we would either achieve a hippyish love of the earth, or run the planet into the ground. As it happens though, we've found ourselves in a kind of in-between-state of awareness of the problem and paralysis of action.

What kind of a state is that? We're a race that's usually caught in either desperate action or defiant ignorance. Easter Island is often held up as a microcosm of our environmental predicament: they died out after destroying all the forests on the island. They didn't just destroy some of the forest, stop and say, "oops," then fade away in a slow decay. No, they died like humans are supposed to — stubbornly cutting down every last tree. But look at what we're doing now: we kind of realize we have to change, but we're hemming and hawing trying to come up with a plan to change. It's so...Canadian!

2012

If you haven't yet heard, the story here is that the Mayans had a calendar that that ends in 2012, which has led everyone with a new-age bone in their body to be convinced that the world will end in 2012. Specifically, a few days before Christmas — man those Mayans were jerks; I'm glad they disappeared. That of course brings up the next obvious point: the Mayans don't generally have a good record when it comes to seeing disaster coming.

Is this the best we can do for an omen of doom? No explanation of why the world would end. No cryptic description of how it will happen, no signs we can argue over. Just a date. There's nothing to this end-of-the-world prediction except the end itself. It's the Final Destination of apocalypses.

Back in university, I tried to convince people that the world would end on September 29, 1997, but at least I had misinterpreted bible verses to back it up. Even Y2K had a story behind it, albeit a silly and poorly understood one. This is just the Mayan calendar stopping without explanation.

Now the fact is that I'm something of an expert on the Mayan Long Count Calendar. Of course, I'm using the modern definition of “expert,” meaning that I didn't only read the Wikipedia entry, I read a couple of other web pages too. It turns out that the Mayan calendar doesn't really end in 2012 — that's just the date when this creation exceeds the age of previous, imperfect creations. Even the Mayans themselves didn't believe that would mean the end of the world. That's a pretty flimsy justification even for a Hollywood blockbuster, never mind for people actually getting worried.

Truth and Reason

I don't want to get too wrapped up in the American health care debate. Let's just agree that there are a lot of good arguments for each side. But, well, that's kind of the problem: no one is actually using those arguments, they're just yelling at each other. As if that's not enough, most of what they're yelling isn't even true. Again, this isn't how I imagined it.

I guess 1984 and Brave New World ushered us towards a view of a future that was dystopian, but was at least an organized dystopia. The citizenry would be held in check by a system of lies, but at least they were well-written lies told by professionals. I never expected that disinformation would be coming in the form of a chain e-mail from Aunt Jean who hasn't read a newspaper in thirty years. At least it fits the human pattern: smart people develop something (here, the Internet) then it gets mishandled by everyone else.

Add to that another problem: for a while now, there's been an over-analysis of politicians' everyday decisions. Everything from the President's choice of beer to his jeans has been criticized. So it's now official, we're living in 1984 in reverse, with the Proles spying on and lying to Big Brother.

Finance

Whenever unusual things happen in the financial world, I like to try to understand it by going back to basic principles and looking at the big picture. Economics is really just a system for allocating resources. So I try putting aside the common terms and abstract ideas, and explaining it like I'm trying to explain it to someone from another planet. For instance, when the price of oil goes up, it's just the system telling us that more people are using a fixed resource, so we're going to have to try to be more frugal with it.

In the case of the housing collapse, it all comes down to the system mistakenly devoting far too much of our resources to building houses in the US. In a way, that's not surprising: as an apartment dweller, I've noticed that people always go a little crazy when they buy a house. Well apparently our whole society went a little bit crazy. The last thing I need is another reason to hate suburbia, but now I can see that it's not only destroyed our environment and our culture, but our economy too.

One of the strangest parts of the financial crisis is that it originated in the US, but they aren't even the hardest hit. Who has been hurt worse? Eastern Europe and India. It hardly seems fair that Americans go nuts trying to buy houses, and the people who suffer the most can't afford houses. I guess the British were hurt too, but if you've ever watched the British house-buying programs on HGTV, then you have to agree there's some kind of real estate karma there. But then there's Iceland; their economy was devastated and their currency devalued. They ended up so poor they couldn't even afford to keep their McDonald's outlets open. That's like being officially demoted out of the First World.

The one group that might benefit are the Chinese. Their economy hicupped when the Americans stopped buying, but now they're moving again, with the Americans recovered enough that they can afford the cheap crap the Chinese make, even if they're still too nervous to buy the expensive stuff Americans or the Japanese make. And now the Chinese — just when it seemed their world domination couldn't get any more inevitable — will end up as America's largest creditor.

And as an aside, let me say this: The Chinese make terrible global villains. No crazy ideology they insist on spreading, no vendetta against anyone, not even a wacky leader. Just people who want to be middle class, and a government that has no aspiration beyond staying in power. Again, so Canadian.

Perhaps more than anything, I hate how this financial crisis has turned everyone's ideologies around. Harper is running up a deficit, the Chinese government is actually acting socialist, the Americans are nationalizing companies. I don't even know who to root for anymore.

If Everyone Else Had A Hammer

There are many things I don't understand about apartment living.  Today I'm wondering: what is with the hammering?  I find I often hear someone hammering something into the wall.  It doesn't go on all the time, you understand.  But I've had to hammer something into the walls maybe once a year, that doesn't nearly account for how often I hear people pounding the walls.

At least I'm assuming it's hammering.  I know, you're thinking that it could be, um, another activity that may cause furniture (among other things) to bang into walls.  I've thought of that, and given that I don't hear any of the associated noises, I'm assuming that's not it either.  So what could it be?  Do other people have way more art hanging on their walls than I do?  Does someone enjoy a carpentry hobby in their one or two bedroom apartment?

One Revelation Per Post

For several years now, I've been following the story of One Laptop Per Child.  It's an effort to develop a cheap and durable laptop that can be distributed to children in developing countries.  It's interesting to me because it combines global altruism with technology.  It also came from Nicholas Negroponte, director of MIT's Media Lab, which is my favourite unfocussed academic institution.

So you can imagine how surprised I was to see this ad for OLPC Canada:



Really?  Gene Simmons?  I guess he might have similar interests to mine.  And it's good to see that he's lending his celebrity to a cause.  I've never seen Bono do a One Laptop Per Child ad.

But then it hit me.  I'm caught up on which celebrity is unexpectedly promoting a charity, and totally missed the real shock: native Canadian kids have to resort to a product designed to help kids in the Third World.

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate

Saturday evening when I attempted to brush my teeth after dinner, I found that the water was out.  That's not unusual in my building: though it's not old, there seems to be inordinate plumbing troubles, and the water gets shut off for repairs every few weeks.  But that's planned for during a weekday; I've never experienced it going off without warning during a weekend or an evening.

So I start wondering: is this something with my apartment?  My floor?  The building?  I figure this is a job for the super.  I could have phoned her, but I've never bothered getting the number, so I head down to the ground floor. 

After travelling a few floors down in the awkward silence of a crowded elevator, I decide to ask, "So, anyone have water problems?"  Yep, that's why all of them are going down.  Also awkward: the super was at the building's potluck that I had neglected to attend. 

When I found her in the crowded lounge, my elevator posse and I didn't even have to explain why we were there.  The super had already answered inquiries from many others and immediately gave us the same spiel: the whole building's water was out, and several nearby buildings as well, and the city was probably working on it but she couldn't get through to them to find out what was happening.

So I went back to my apartment to cross my legs and wait it out.  I also checked the city utilities web page to see if they had any info, but it was just your basic page of unchanging general information.  So I was still in the dark.

Which brings up something I find weird about our world: that there are still so many areas where we completely fail to get information out.  The building's only way of communicating with tenants is notes on the elevator wall.  That's fine for advertising, say, potlucks.  But the only way we can get immediate info is in person or on the phone from the super, wasting her time either way.

As for the city, they just use their web page to offer rental water-heaters, when a quick note about current system status could alleviate our worries.  And if a water emergency had led to a boil-water advisory, we probably would find out about it unless we see in on the local TV or radio station (in which case, I'm a gonner.)

What's frustrating is that it wouldn't be too hard to fix all this.  I'm not asking for any new technology or massive new expenditures.  A few years ago it would have been expensive/time-consuming for a building to have its own web page.  But now any idiot can have his own blog. (Pause for your jokes.)  And it wouldn't be too hard for a city utility to tweet changes in the system's status.

And just so you know, the water wasn't out for much more than an hour.  I take responsibility for fixing it: It was just as I got my coat and shoes on to go brave the pre-Christmas malls that I heard the water re-entering the building's pipes.

Thank You For Such A Useless Gift

Oral-B is running a strange ad right now for their electric toothbrushes.  Of course, their ads have been odd for a while, what with their idea of using teams of dancers running around the Bonneville Salt Flats interpreting the life of a toothbrush bristle.  And it gets even more disturbing at the end of the commercial, where they show a close-up of one of the dancers running her tongue over her apparently immaculate teeth, enjoying the taste of clean teeth far more than anyone should.

But what's extra strange about this ad is the final line from the narrator: "You can find the perfect holiday gift at a store near you."  I always want to respond to that by saying, "That's nice, but where can I find one of your electric toothbrushes?  I'd like to buy one if only to thank you for your lovely if cryptic advice that I can find the perfect gift at a store near me."

It's one of the unfortunate sides of modern Christmas, this annual attempt to convince us to give mundane products as gifts.  Really, it's to be expected:  Whatever else Christmas is, it's now a huge boon for business, so every company wants to get in on it, not just the toy companies.  It's great for the economy: you can bet central bankers the world over wish they could make everyone feel obligated go out and buy extra stuff.  But it's a bit of a downer if we just buy the same stuff we normally do, but more of it.  Buy a family member an electric toothbrush in June and it's just a purchase.  Do it in December and it's a gift.

It would be great if Christmas was not just an artificial boost for our collective finances, but an artificial boost for our psychology too.  So I encourage everyone: resist the urgings to do your gift shopping at the grocery store.  Restrict your Christmas purchases to completely useless things you would never normally buy.  Let's keep Christmas impractical!

Things I Should Like #2

I Should Like
Futurama

Why should I like it?
A fish-out-of-water sci-fi comedy, it's basically The Simpsons meets The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a combination of my two favourite humour franchises of the twentieth century.

Why don't I like it?
It's really just too goofy. While the Simpsons and the Hitchhiker's Guide usually had a societal commentary just beneath their surreal surfaces, Futurama always comes across as just a bunch of silliness. There's nothing wrong with that (hello, Family Guy) but it's just not what you would expect given its pedigree and following. And although I know it is a favourite of the geek community, it always seems like it's more broadly focussed. It's less a clever spoof of sci-fi than a broad spoof of what normal people think sci-fi consists of.

And then there's Fry. I've never really liked the dumb-protagonist kind of comedy, but it particularly doesn't work when you have a silly guy in a silly world; Fry seems more at home in the future than he does in his home time. But speaking of silliness, it's always interesting how many characters in the Simpsons aren't that funny (quick, think of a funny line from Marge.) That show seems to understand the value of The Straight Man. In Futurama, all the characters act as clowns, with no one to bounce off of.

Arrhythmic Nation 1812

Great, 2012 is almost over and I still haven't said anything about the War Of 1812 Bicentenary.  Yes, I know, the war lasted into 1815, so I still have plenty of time to talk about it.  But I'm sure the anniversary hype won't last that long, so here goes...

It reminds me of the 500th anniversary of Columbus's voyage to the Americas.  Remember how awkward that was?  This anniversary isn't nearly as bad - we don't have to dance around any genocides this time.  But there's still plenty of pretence nonetheless.

First of all, there's the strange way both Americans and Canadians think they won, because each think they were provoked by the other, and thus won because they successfully defended themselves.  In a lot of the world, that sort of disagreement would lead to hurt feelings at best, another war at worst.  But not here, because of the next weirdness: we're each trying to draw esteem from a war we fought against a country that's now our close friend.  I mean, if we looked back on the war with regret or as an event we'd outgrown, that would be understandable.  Lots of countries have eras they've come to regret.  But we still look back on 1812 as a meaningful achievement, not the unnecessarily triggered and incompetently fought incident it was. 

The Canadian government has been running TV commercials publicising the anniversary, and glorifying it as a defining moment of Canadian history.  If the Americans saw these ads, I'm sure they'd be so angry they'd quit arguing with each other and find something Canadian to boycott.  Say, Blackberrys.  Well, something they aren't already boycotting.  The point is, they might actually have justification for being angry.  As we seem to be doing more often, Canadians  are taking a self-important attitude we'd find infuriating coming from Americans.  And I'm sure Native Canadians loved that friendly nod between Sir Isaac Brock and Tecumseh implying such a wonderful sense of togetherness.

One ad carried the implication that the war was "to keep us free."  Let's think about this: at the time, Canada was a colony in an empire that was still (at least partly) ruled by an unelected monarch.  And that's before you even get to the fact that the elected officials in Canada in the early 1800's were horribly corrupt.  But the country we got invaded by was democratic.  We were hardly fighting to keep free.

And this is a big problem with Canada's attempts to build a national story: our antagonism with the Americans wasn't due to any desire to be free, or anything associated with today's Canadian values.  It was blind loyalty to an archaic institution that was already outdated.  It may be true that most Canadians are in favour of the monarchy today, but that's the symbolic museum-monarchy we currently have.  The idea of siding with an unelected leader against a democratic government is a decision hardly any modern Canadians would choose.  Yes, in retrospect most of us (myself included) are glad we're independent.  But that was really just a lucky accident; eventually we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that our predecessors didn't defend the country so they could achieve universal health care and tolerance to immigrants.

My Latest Beans On Toast

I know I've complained about payday loan companies already, but I have something else to complain about.  It's not my fault: they just keep making stupid commercials.  It's not like the old days where their ads' biggest crimes were trying to find slangy ways to make their rates sound less scary, as in the classic MoneyMart line, "It's like three bucks on a hun'." (tip of the hat to my one time collaborator Ralph Leibniz)

But now in addition to the companies I complained about earlier, there's a new entry to the market trying to get their name out there: Wonga.  Apparently, this is a British company and they've decided to make their Britishness a key part of the brand.  Okay, I guess people think of Britain as stable and reliable so that makes sense.  Well, it makes sense if you haven't watched the news in five years.  And how are they showing their Britishness?  By having a bunch of old ladies (in puppet form) as their commercial spokespeople.

Believe it or not, I - a person of English background - can live with that.  You want to think of the entire nation as elderly, fine.  I guess they won all those Olympic medals this summer for nothing.  I can even deal with the ad looking like a pale imitation of the classic Spitting Image.

But what really ticks me off about those ads is the fake British slang.  It's obviously a North American's idea of how the British actually talk, written by somebody who hasn't noticed that true British slang is usually unintelligible to others. "He's hotter than a teapot?"  People don't actually say that.  Try "cor, he's well 'ard."  At the very least, you could learn the rules of cockney rhyming slang and make something up: "He's hot" becomes, say, "He's Pol Pot."

And the other ad has her saying music makes her "want to crumpet?"  That's even worse, since "crumpet" is actual slang, and doesn't mean what they seem to think it means.  I'll leave you to look it up at urban dictionary if you really want to know what, but it's not your typical ad language.

1% Inspiration

You may have seen the news this week that a company called Golden Spike will be offering trips to the moon for $1.5 billion.  First of all, I'll believe that when I see it.  Though it may seem like an astronomical amount of money (pun not intended) that's no where near enough money to go to the moon.  Presumably they're counting on a lot of people taking them up on the offer, and pooling the money into one big effort.  I know, it sounds to be talking about economies of scale for a product with a cost in the billions, but it could happen in today's world.  What I question is: are there really enough billionaires in the world that would part with a significant portion of their fortune for a one-off trip to the moon?  Yes, the Russians have already carried paying customers into space; but that was for the relative pittance of $20 million.  Most of those tourist astronauts couldn't afford this moon trip.  But I do find this concept reassuring in one way: rich people could finally start spending money on impressive stuff, not just any old expensive thing. 

Income disparity is a big concern these days.  I'm not happy to see the income gap myself, but I do concede that it has one possible positive:  New technologies and ideas - too expensive to enter mass-production - can be offered in smaller numbers at a higher price to the rich.  We've already seen how lots of electronics can enter at the top of the market, gain customers and investors, then spread through all of society.  To put it another way, I don't have much confidence in money trickling down, but technology often does.

Trouble is, a lot of what rich people buy is expensive but not really innovative.   Look at an area I know: cars.  The famously most expensive car in the world is the Bugatti Veyron.  With a 250+mph top speed, it's certainly an impressive car.  But technologically, it isn't much more advanced than your average compact.  Yes, it has a thousand horsepower, but that's not because the engine is "better" than any other car, there's just more of it (16 cylinders and 8.0 litres to be exact; essentially the size of four compact car engines.)  You could think of it as the car equivalent of a mansion: the large house isn't better at being a house than a suburban bungalow, there's just more of it.  I don't know that much about the world of expensive products - I've been in the dark since Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous went off the air - but it seems this patter repeats itself in many areas: expensive things are big or rare, but not unprecedented and original.

Hopefully the super-rich will decide that putting millions of miles on the private jet is less impressive than one round-trip to the moon.  I'd even let them keep the Bush tax cuts then.

Step Aside, Grinch

I - like many people these days - am getting sick of the hoopla around Christmas.  It's nothing about Christmas itself: it's the inescapability of it.  I've voluntarily looked at Christmas related products in stores, and participated in Christmas activities.  Yet I go a little crazy when every public place is playing non-stop holiday songs starting a month before the big day.  Worse, the start of the Christmas season is getting earlier and earlier every year, threatening to overwhelm Halloween.

But today, I saw a way we can combat it.  Ironically, it was among the seasonal display in Walmart.  There, in between the figurines from the 60's Rudolf TV special and the Kiss tree ornaments, was the thing that will stop Christmas from taking over the whole calendar. 

It was a shelf of Teddy Bears, finely outfitted in either a party dress or a vaguely Heffnerian robe, all with "2013" on the heel.  Yes, they were New Years decorations.  With more than two weeks to go before Christmas, Walmart already has the New Years decorations out.  And this is how we can win: by doing to Christmas what Christmas has done to everything else in the bottom quarter of the calendar.  So I'm calling on all natural allies of New Years Eve/Day to support them on this:  young people, football fans, partiers, drunks.  Buy any New Years favours you can find, and buy them now.  Convince retailers to get the Christmas stuff moving out as soon as possible.  After this attack from the rear, Christmas will still be an ubiquitous cultural force, but only for two weeks in early November.

The Truth About Cats And Dogs

I've never been a cat person or a dog person.  It seems like most people are one or the other, but I'm neither.  It comes down to their personalities.  Dogs are in-your-face, cats are cold and remote.  So most people find something in one or the other.  Me, I don't like people with those personalities, so I'm definitely not going to buy animals like that.

What's annoying about this is that we created dogs and cats.  Yes, we the humans domesticated dogs and cats out of wolves and wildcats.  So why couldn't we make them a little more pleasant to be around.  Or more importantly, with all the dog breeds and their huge variation, why have they concentrated so much on appearance, while the behaviour is limited to vague claims of "loyalty."  Couldn't they have bred at least one for politeness, or respect for personal space.  You would think that they would have thought of that before they thought of dachshunds.

Two different pet personalities is clearly not enough for all of humanity.  So let's domesticate a new animal.  Do what we did before: take a carnivorous mammal and breed it into a cuddly companion.  I'm sure Jared Diamond will have some explanation why this can't be done, but hey: this is humanity dealing with nature.  Why start limiting ourselves to what's "possible?"

I think we should start with bears.  They always seemed relatively laid-back for giant meat-eaters, and everyone loves teddy bears.  So let's start the selective breading now, and in a few millennia, our descendants will be able to have a cuddly little pet that's friendly but not too pushy.

Get Behind Me Santa

I've never really understood the obsession we have with believing in Santa.  Personally, I don't really remember a time when I believed in Santa, though I'm sure at some point I did.  No, my parents didn't spoil the idea for me.  But on the other hand, they didn't exactly work hard to keep up the ruse.  Once I became conscious of the planet's size, they didn't try to convince me of the existence of sleighs with warp drive or million-strong teams of elf assistants.

And that's the thing I don't understand.  There are lots of instances were we make up something to defend kids from the complexities or evils of the world.  It's the insistence that kids maintain that belief even though they've long outgrown the need for them.  Maybe we're afraid of our kids growing up and Santa is a way of hanging on to their innocence.  But normally we celebrate the milestones of a child's maturity.  I know, compared to walking and talking, accuiring the brains to understand the aerodynamic limitations of reindeer doesn't seem like much.  But it is progress, and normally parents aren't exactly shy about trumpeting their child's accomplishments.

Some make the point that it's important to believe or imagine.  Believing in something is a big part of most religious beliefs.  Is Santa a sort of introduction to religion?  (No one mention this line of thinking to Richard Dawkins or we'll never hear the end of it.)  As for for the idea that Santa belief is important for imagination, I have to ask, is lack of imagination really that big a problem in our society?  Wait, before you answer, go take a look at the folks camping-out to be first on line for The Hobbit and then get back to me.

Neo Tokyo, We Have a Problem

I came across this article about how the Japanese space agency is creating a robot to assist the Japanese astronaut who will soon be going to the International Space Station.  But this isn't some utilitarian machine to do esoteric technical work.  No, it's a cute, human shaped robot whose primary task is to make conversation and keep the astronauts company.

That's what love about Japan: I don't think there's any other country on earth that is as gloriously, unapologetically reaffirming of its own stereotypes.  The Americans didn't put gun racks on the shuttle.  The Russians didn't put a little spacecraft inside a bigger one inside a bigger one.  And the Chinese spacecraft, to my knowledge, was both expensive and made of non-toxic materials. 

Here in Canada, our greatest contribution to space exploration has been the Canadarm.  I suppose that's a little stereotypical: it's practical, it's not flamboyant, in a pinch it can be used as a bottle opener. 

In Zelda We Trust

Yesterday, while virtual-driving in Gran Turismo I tried driving on the all-ice track for the first time.  And then today, I had to drive in icy conditions for he first time this year.  I guess the practice was useful.  Though I assure you I was much more careful in real life, rarely attempting to drift through the turns on Highway 7.

(As an aside, thank you, Samsung spell checker, for interpreting "Gran Turismo" as "Grain Tourism."  I notice it had no problem spelling "Samsung," however.  Let me try something: "Hyundai."  I think overly nationalistic programmers have made it to only work reliably with Korean names.  "Seoul," "kimchi,"  "Gangway Style" well, maybe not.)

But back to my main point: I apparently have a weird gift of prophecy through video games.  It's impressive; many other drivers on the road with me had predictive skills that were not in any way supernatural, and they were not even able to see the obvious consequences of their actions.  Guys, when you've just driven past two cars in the ditch - one on it's side - then you come up on traffic doing 50 in a 90, heading to the passing lane isn't the best idea. 

But, video game gods, much as I do appreciate this gift, well, a few weeks ago in the game I won a Porsche in a race.  Was it too much to ask for that to be the event that played out in real life?  Okay, I guess if I had won a Porsche in real life, I would have totalled it driving today.  Game gods, you are wise indeed.

A Couple of Couples

It seems to be a trend for companies to have a recurring couple in their ads.  Lots of TV ads take place in a home, but I'm talking about using the same family each time.  Canadian Tire tried it a few years ago, and people quickly got sick of them.  Now both Leon's and Rogers are trying the same thing.

So why do they do this?  Could it be cheaper this way, filming several spots the same day with the same cast and set?  Great, now even marketing is using economies of scale.  Can Chinese ads be far behind?  Or maybe it's because they've noticed that having actors in different ads for different products is confusing (Dammit man, are you a PlayStation exec or a Holiday Inn customer?)  Signing up the same people for all your ads means that there's no brand confusion, and a couple of Canadian actors won't starve for a couple of years.

The Leon's couple is easily the more tolerable of the two.  I even laughed at the banana joke the first time I heard it.  But better than that, they actually break out of the goofy, immature man/smug humourless woman template (a little.)  In contrast, the Rogers couple are just generic 21st century television ad archetypes.  And the whole series really hit bottom with the most recent spot, which features a Matrix "bullet time" reference.  I did the math, and that would be the equivalent of an "E.T. phone home" joke in 1995.

Tastes Like Chicken

Is anyone else concerned about McDonald's newest creation, Chicken McBites?  It's just a bunch of tiny pieces of breaded chicken.  Not a bad idea on its own, and the fun-loving bohemian young people in the ads certainly like them.  But really, you can't be serious that there's more of the chicken left after you've made the McNuggets? 

I can think of three possibilities:

• They've found a way to make more of the chicken edible.  Giblets, unpleasant parts of chicken anatomy are now processed into a meat-like texture.
• They've been stockpiling left-over chicken pieces ever since they started serving chicken.  So now they have to do something with thirty years of, say, chicken tongues.
• Hormones and genetic engineering have made chickens bigger.  But for some reason, the excess meet only comes in small spherical pieces.

Rogue Points

The 100th Grey Cup was today.  As the old joke goes, it was a nice game, too bad the Stampeders weren't there for it.  Actually, it wasn't that great of a game: the Argos dominated the first half, then played it conservative for the second half. Overall we saw one team play one good half.

I skipped over the half-time show.  It was a controversial choice of Justin Bieber, Carly Rae Jepsen, Marianas Trench, and Gordon Lightfoot.  Even if you accept the blatant pandering to young audiences that wouldn't normally watch football, you have to admit that's an odd group.  The league could have been a little more subtle in their tweens-and-token-old-guy strategy; say throw in Buble as a bridge between generations.

But it wasn't all fun, games, and demographics.  I followed the game on twitter, and I was disappointed at how negative people were.  Obviously there were complaints about the officiating, criticisms of underperforming players, and a bit of discussion of the half-time performers.  Also, I hope Eric Tillman - the former Edmonton General Manager who traded Ricky Ray to Toronto - got all his stuff out of the city after being fired, because he should really never show his face there again.

What disappointed me about the Grey Cup tweets was how dismissive everyone was of the game and the entire league.  Certainly, football - or the Canadian rules - are not for everyone.  But at least criticize it for what it is instead of making up reasons.  I found the first see-how-boring-the-CFL-is tweet ten minutes into the game.  This was after two scores, two turnovers, and as much action as you would expect at that point in an NFL game.  I wish people would finally realize that every sport is boring if you don't know what's going on.

And of course there were the usual outdated criticisms, no one's watching, the league is about to go bankrupt, there are two teams named "roughriders."  In a way, the twitter negativity is proof that the league is doing well.  Most of the topics I follow on Twitter are small enough that they don't attract that huge underbelly of Internet bullying.  Congratulations, CFL, you've made the big time.

Not-So Popular Opinions

It's pretty universally acknowledged that image plays too big a part of modern politics. But what I find frustrating is that to most people, "image" in politics means excessive, unreal polish. It's a guy like John Edwards and his $400 haircut.  But really, the most damaging manipulation of image by politicians is in those that don't seem like they have an image. Those that have carefully built up a facade resembling an average person.

The Toronto Star has a good article eviscerating this idea of the populist, everyman politician. It's a sort of advance post-mortem on Rob Ford's mayorality (I guess that would be a pre-mortem.)

However, I would criticize it on a couple of points. First, it does spend a surprising amount of time on Ronald Reagan. I'm not a fan of his, but with newer and clearer examples of the fake populist, all that Ronnie-targeting comes across as unresolved issues on the part of the writer.  And secondly, when it comes to municipal politicians who get a pass from the media and public thanks to a folksy image, they have a great local example in Mississauga's Hazel McCallion.  But unlike Ford, a large segment of the Star's readership still love her, so they don't have the courage to call her out.

Things I Should Like But Don't

I often fit neatly into stereotypes of subcultures, most notably geek and hipster, as I've referred to before.  Yet, there are times I don't even fit into the stereotypical expectations of a person like me.  In this new semi-regular feature, I'll explore people, places, and things that a person like me should like, but I don't.  I don't usually hate these things, I just don't like them.

I Should Like:

Will Ferrell

Why should I like him?

He takes a more understated approach to comedy than the goofy, mean-spirited clowning that's become the norm.

Why don't I like him?

I'm not entirely sure.  For one thing, people who never drop their persona have always creeped me out (Jack Black and Bill Murray could make the list too.)  But I think a big part of it is that he has somehow set himself up with such a reputation for being funny that he doesn't really have to do anything any more.  Just going through the motions of appearances is enough to make audiences laugh hysterically.  Good for him, but I just don't enjoy watching it.

Do These Pants Make Me Look Obscure?

For this week's Sunday night NFL game, the Pittsburgh Steelers wore replicas of their original uniforms.  In honour of their eightieth anniversary, they broke out uniforms they would normally never be caught dead in, with yellow and brown horizontal striped shirts and socks, and light beige pants that did not compliment and offensive lineman's physique. 

This isn't unusual.  They're usually known as "throwback" uniforms.  Throughout the sports world, fashion crimes are committed in the name of nostalgia.  Here are some recommendations to improve future throwbacks.

They should be about nostalgia, not trivia

A lot of NFL teams are guilty of this, since their histories usually started long before the sport got national exposure.  So you have, say, the Broncos showing up in brown uniforms that no one remembers.  The New York Jets had a long obsession with the fact that they were originally called the Titans.  I don't know why anyone would care: the Titan uniforms were ugly, there's already a team called the Titans, and nobody cared about the team back then.  I'm sure the Jets played a few games before they upset Baltimore in Super Bowl III, it's just that no one cares that they did.  Which brings me to the next point:

Don't Throw Back if you have nothing to Throw Back To.

Take the Pittsburgh Penguins.  Apparently there was an organization in Pittsburgh called the "Penguins" dating back to the late sixties.  But as far as anyone cares, they came into being in the summer of 1984 when they drafted Mario Lemieux.  Yet, every year they play in ugly blue uniforms that harken back to when the team was terrible and no one came to see their games.

Be Fair and Throw Back to All Eras

By exclusively using retro uniforms from the sixties and earlier, you're just indulging the Baby Boomers.  Why not have retro seventies and eighties uniforms too?  Because they're ugly, sure.  Blue Jays, Buccaneers, you've done it, now how about the Astros, White Sox and Padres.  Canucks, even I won't ask for your yellow uniforms, but how about the black "V" shirts?

Make it Worth It

My own St. Louis Rams are guilty of this, using throwback uniforms to their lone Super Bowl championship.  Thing is, that was only twelve years ago, and the uniforms they used then were pretty much the same as their current ones, but with gaudier colours.  If you don't have anything to go back to, why not make something up?   Just put together some random shades of brown and beige, and it will probably still end up looking better than most alternate uniforms.

I'm Really Wired

Here are the chargers for my phone, tablet, and e-reader.

I realized that I haven't bothered to separate the wires for at least a week: since I know what each end looks like.  So when I need to charge something, I just search for the two ends I need and plug them in.

Fittingly, The Blue Jays' Fate Depends On Someone Saying, "OK"

This week, the Toronto Blue Jays agreed to a massive trade with the Miami Marlins, bringing in several star players for surprisingly little cost.  It has Jays fans like myself feeling a very strange sensation we haven't had in years - what was it called again? - ah yes: optimism.

But baseball commissioner Bud Selig has been taking his time approving the trade, which has people nervous.  Yes, it's probably just because it is a spectacularly large trade that will take a while to check for crossed T's and dotted I's.  But still, baseball trades are usually just rubber stamped by the league office, so some people - particularly Marlins fans - are thinking he might actually be thinking about rejecting it.

No pressure Mr. Selig, but we will hunt you down if you reject this trade.  Yes, it may seem like this trade was a one-sided money shift which detracts from the purity of the game.  And you might be surprised that I do have sympathy for the Marlins and their fans; their seemingly promising team is now back to rebuilding mode, with no hope of competitiveness for years.

But the purity-of-the-game/fair-to-the-fans ship sailed a long time ago.  Yes, you could cancel the trade because it's all about money.  But there have been hundreds of salary dumps, rent-a-player deals, and stratospheric free-agent signings over the years.  If you were going to stop it, there have been plenty of chances over the past couple of decades.

Even you Marlins fans have to agree.  Yes, it may seem like you just traded half your team for two prospects and a homophobic shortstop.  But the fact is your team did essentially buy two World Series titles.  You live by the dollar, you die by the dollar.

Baseball decided years ago on a laissez-faire set-up for its economics.  You may or may not like that - I don't; I'd rather have an over-centralized, enforced-equality, semi-socialist system like the NFL - but that is the way things have been for years, and it's not fair to change the game on us now, just when it's going our way.

A Horse On The Force Is A Horse, Of Course

The local police force has a couple of horses, and today they showed up on a street I was walking down.  I didn't see the horses themselves, but - how to put this delicately - I saw evidence that a horse had recently been there.  Or a large and unwell dog; I hope it was a horse.

This isn't even the first time I've seen the unpleasant remnants of the police horses' presence.  And it has me asking, isn't there a law against allowing a large mammal to take a dump on a public street?  I mean, we have stoop-and-scoop laws. 

See, it was a little controversial when they first got the horses a few years ago.  Yes, there are some areas where horses are very useful, such as crowd control.  But we don't have a lot of use for them here, and there are of course some start-up costs associated with getting your first police horses, like getting a stable.  Thus, many suspected it was just because someone at the police department wanted a horse. 

So I have to ask, how many crimes do you suppose the horses have prevented, and does it exceed the number of "crimes" the horses have deposited on the streets?

A Reassuring Thought

McDonald's has had "third pounder" burgers for a while now.  Of course, that can lead one to be cynical about western diets, since the quarter pounder was apparently not enough anymore.  And in that cynical vein, it occurred to me to wonder how many customers choose the quarter pounder over the third pounder, wrongly thinking ¼ is bigger than ⅓.

But then I realized: This is McDonald's.  They would never introduce a sandwich without researching and focus-grouping it within an inch of its life.  If they think people will know that third-pound burgers are bigger, it's because they've done the research behind it.  So it's undeniable: North American consumers understand basic fractions.

Still no idea what the Third Pounders are called in Europe.  For that, we'll have to wait for the Pulp Fiction sequel, and that will have to wait until Quentin Tarantino sells the rights to Disney.  Okay, I've crossed the line from "blogging" to "stream of consciousness," time to go.

Sweet Dreams Are Not Usually Made Of This

Many great ideas occur to people through dreams.  The DNA structure, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Space Invaders, the Twilight series, Yesterday, Every Breath You Take: they all came from dreams.

And last night, I found inspiration.  I dreamt that I moved my cell phone to my right pocket, and switching my wallet the other way.  It makes perfect sense since I hold the phone with my right hand, but I hold my wallet with my left hand so I can reach into it with my right hand.  I would have preferred an iconic song melody, but you have to take what the subconscious offers.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About The Future #6

J K Rowling, Dan Brown, Stephanie Meyer and Stieg Larsson all become household names – as authors!

Too Cool For Fools

There are signs up in our buildings instructing people not to use their air conditioners, because it is too cold.  Today, it was a high of 6°C (that would be 43°F) which has me asking the obvious question: what kind of an idiot is still running their air conditioner in this weather? 

I was amazed enough at the start of summer when they needed a sign telling people to keep their windows closed when the AC is on, and not to set it lower than 19°.   That's pretty cold: no one I know is as bothered by hot weather as I am, yet I'm perfectly happy to keep it set at 24°.  I can't imagine why any non-penguinoid lifeform would want it that cold.

So this is another in the I-can't-believe-they-have-to-tell-people-that file, along with:

• clean up anything you spill in front of the garbage chute
• don't throw anything off the balcony
• don't let your dogs do their business directly in front of the entrance.

In Sickness And In Health, Through Grinding And Slow Dances

I was at a wedding this weekend. I won't talk much about it because I make an effort to protect the identities of my friends and family in this blog.  It's pretty much the only way bloggers are like Spiderman.

But I will mention the dance.  I heard some critiques of the DJ's work, but personally I have some sympathy for wedding DJs.  After all, they have to satisfy several concepts, like:

• get the oldies out of the way early in the night while the parents and grandparents are still there.

• fit the trendy dance songs in there

• get old, formerly trendy dance songs in, since those are the ones post-adolescent guests will recognize

• for similar reasons, any song with dance instructions in the song are encouraged

• along those lines, "Time Warp" is still acceptable, but "YMCA" is too clinched (at least until late in the night when everyone is plastered)

• get a lot of the slow songs out of the way early in the evening.  Everyone is still full of love, and there are enough people around that the singles sitting out won't feel too conspicuous.

• adults are picky, having gotten beyond the dance-to-anything attitudes of high school and college, so try to put songs of the same type together to keep everyone on the dance floor
• for similar reasons, resist the urge to satisfy all these rules through covers, mash-ups and medleys, that will just confuse people (again, until later when everyone is smashed)

• try to give a nod to the couple's tastes in music, even if it's death-metal

Keep Calm and Approve This Message

Awhile back I did some spoofs of the ubiquitous "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters.  I didn't do an American version of the poster, due to the polarised nature of current American culture.  It's hard to condense a country down to five words at the best of times.  So instead I gave each half of the country its own poster, advising them how to deal with stress:

And, for the swing states:

I'm Literally Brought To You By...

I just read this article in Wired about AdverCar, a company that will pay you to put ads on your car.  I'm sure I'm not alone in wondering why it's taken so long for this to happen.  I would have thought that in trying to think up new things to put ads on, cars would have come before bananas, gas pumps, and public restroom cubicle doors.  Unfortunately it's not nearly enough to pay for the car,but does help with gas money.

I was discussing this with someone years ago, and they pointed out (prophetically, apparently) that the weakness in the plan is the location.  The advertisers will want to know where you drive, so that they can target ads and figure out how much it's worth spending on you.  And that leads to the problem that sinks a lot of ad-sustained businesses: anyone poor/cheap enough to want to sign up for this service is probably not worth advertising to.  If you're desperate enough to drive around in a car with "I'm lovin' it" across the hood, you probably don't have much disposable income, and probably don't live around anyone else who does, either.

Really, the only way to make advertising on cars work is if you syncronized it with Nascar.  It sounds stupid to drive a car covered with M&M's characters on it, but if Kyle Busch does it first, that makes it okay.

Vive le Premier!

Recently, these posters appeared around downtown Kitchener:

Now that's just weird.  If you have any idea what point they're trying to make, I'd like to know.

So This is Halloween

I suppose I should like Halloween.  It's like the dark counter-weight to Christmas: less uptight, no relentless pressure to be having a good time, and ultimately with more giving.  And yet, I don't seem to get it.

See, whenever I hear an adult reminisce about their wonderful memories about childhood, they always emphasise how great it was to pretend.  For this one day, a child can be anything they want.  And to that I say, isn't that pretty much every day for children.  If, as a child, I wanted to pretend I was something I wasn't, I just did it.  I didn't wait for one day a year to get all my imaginary stuff in at once.

If anything, Halloween seemed to be a curtailing of a child's imagination, since you have this vague limitation on what you could choose to be.  You were encouraged to be something scary.  But not something really scary, just scary-flavoured.  You could be a ghost or a witch or one of a number of other things children never voluntarily pretend to be.  But if you want to pretend you're a three-armed alien from Alpha Centauri, people will look at you funny.  Save that for, well, tomorrow.

The Schlock Heard 'Round The World

There have been a lot of ads on TV for the latest game in the Assassin's Creed franchise.  Or more accurately, there have been two ads that they've shown over and over.  This game takes place during the American Revolution.

The one ad uses the song, "Coming Home," which subsequently sticks in my head for the next couple of hours.  That doesn't really seem to be apropos for either assassins or the American Revolution; but then there seems to be a tradition that video game ads have music that has nothing to do with the game itself.

The other ad uses "America The Beautiful," which is at least on topic.  Though if you listen to the lyrics of the song, like, "For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties...From sea to shining sea" you realise the song is mostly about places America added long after the revolution.  But more troubling, they prominently feature a line saying the revolution is about "whether Americans are to be free men or slaves."  For one thing, comparing unfair taxation to slavery is just a bit over-the-top even by the standards of American jingoism.  But more to the point is the (presumably accidental) irony: God forbid anyone in colonial America should be enslaved.  If you were wondering whether many African-Americans had broken into the gaming industry, there's your answer.

On The Buses

Walking home today, I walked past a bus stopped at a red light.  It was one of those buses with an ad completely covering the side of the bus, with even the windows covered with that perforated one-way poster material so people inside can still see out. 

Sometimes those whole-bus ads are well done - the most memorable being a bread ad where the bus was made to look like a giant loaf of bread.  More often though, it's a real estate agent with their picture blown up to humongous proportions.  I don't really get those ads: how is seeing a big picture of the agent going to make us want to use their services?  They're reasonably good-looking people, but not exactly supermodels.  It would be like a restaurant ad that doesn't show you what the food looks like, but does include a photo of the chef.

And if I was going to have my picture blown up so my face is the size of an SUV, I'd want it to be a really nice picture.  I'd find a photographer with the 20 gigapixel camera, and personally Photoshop the result to remove any blemish that would end up being an inch or more across.  But somehow real estate agents are okay with fuzzy, washed-out photos that look like they were taken with the first generation of camera-phones.

This ad, however, was a much nicer ad for a new condo development.  As a downtown resident, I have an interest in new urban development in the city, so I was interested in where this new building would be going.  The ad didn't say where it would be, so I had a good look at the artist's rendition of the structure to see if I could recognise the location.  As I'm staring at the picture, it occurs to me that it's directly over one of the bus windows, so there's probably someone inside wondering why some weirdo suddenly stopped walking down the street and started staring intently at him.

And If You Want To See The KHL, I Can Get You There Cheap

My earlier post about choosing a team in the Kontinental Hockey League attracted an interesting spam comment.  I've had spam in the comments before, making a generic, non-specific statement before offering a link to cutratecialis.org or something.

This time, however, the spam was clearly triggered by my mention of Donetsk, a major city in the Ukraine.  (Argh!  I mean "a major city in Ukraine"  I seem to remember someone getting angry about calling them "The Ukraine.")  It went into a discussion of how important Donetsk has become, and how you can still get cheap hotel rooms, in spite of it being the happenin' place on the Black Sea.

Odd, that's never happened before.  I haven't mentioned that many cities in the blog before, but they do come up occasionally.  I've made random-sounding references to Chinese cities before, but never received details on car-rental deals in Fuzhou.  So I'm guessing this is an Eastern European thing.  So we'll see if just mentioning places like Gdansk, Ljubljana, Tallinn, Tirana, and Bratislava is enough to trigger spam bots of the East.

My Pessimism Knows No Bounds

We found out this week that the cholera epidemic in Haiti following the earthquake started with bacteria carried by emergency personnel from Nepal.  That's terrible news, and we'll want answers about how this wasn't foreseen and can be prevented in the future.  And there's a lawsuit against the U.N. in Haiti for a billion dollars.

It would be nice if financial reparations and more careful future behaviour are the only things coming out of this incident.  But if there really is a great deal of money changing hands over this, it's sure to reduce future efforts.  Usually when there's a natural disaster somewhere in the world, it takes a long time for the rest of the world to respond.  You can bet responses will be even slower after all the cover-your-ass checks are done.  And if a big payout comes directly from Nepal, then it and other developing countries are going to be very reluctant to contribute to future humanitarian missions.

I'd certainly like to see justice done, I'm just skeptical that any changes are going to save more lives (in preventing disease) than they cost (in reduced response to disasters.)

Meanwhile in Italy, several geophysicists have been sent to prison for being too reassuring about the possibility of an earthquake.  It isn't quite as bad as the way it's being described: that they've been sent to prison for failing to predict the quake, even though that's impossible.  However, the reality is almost as frustrating: after one person used a widely discredited method to predict that there was a major quake coming, the actual scientists tried to reassure people, and were thus considered to have encouraged complacency.

This made me think back to the persecution of Galileo.  People have seen that as evidence of the Catholic Church being against science.  But now I realise it wasn't the church; it's the Italian justice system that hates science.  By the way, I've read reassurances that the way Italian justice works, they probably won't serve any time.  But still, you have to wonder what facts scientists will hold back from now on. 

Hockey Night in the Eastern Bloc

Let's face it, this isn't looking good for an NHL season this year. Sports programs are already having trouble filling the 95% of airtime they usually dedicate to hockey. I notice that TSN has even shown some highlights of Russia's Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). That's nice, they have plenty of talented players. But we don't know anything about the teams and don't know who we want to see winning. So I did a little Wikipedia research and came up with some reasons:

Western Conference

Team Name	In English that would be...	People you might recognize	Reason to cheer for them
Slovan Bratislava (Bratislava, Slovakia)	Bratislava Blue Eagles	Miroslav Satan	Czechs got most of the best players in the divorce
Vityaz Chekhov	Chekhov Knights	Danny Markov, GM Alexi Zhamnov	Think of the jokes cheering for Chekhov
HC Donbass (Donetsk, Ukraine)	Donetsk Donbass (Donbass is the area they play in)	Alexi Ponikarovsky	Lots of Canadians have Ukrainian blood, here's your team
Dynamo Moscow	Moscow Dynamo	Nicklas Bäckström, Alexander Ovechkin	They're the Mets to the Red Army's Yankees
Lev Praha (Prague, Czech Republic)	Prague Lions	Marcel Hossa, Alexandre Picard	Czech Republic: home of Pilsner
Dinamo Riga (Riga, Latvia)	Riga Dynamo	Rob Schremp, Mikael Tellqvist	As you may know from international tournaments, Latvia has the loudest fans.
SKA St. Petersburg	St. Petersburg Soldiers	Sergei Bobrovsky, Ilya Kovalchuk, Viktor Tikhonov (grandson of the famous coach)	If you like the St. Louis Blues or Utah Jazz, why not cheer for the Ska
Severstal Cherepovets	Northern Steel presents Cherepovets Steelers		Hamilton, be glad that one steel city got a big-league team.
Dinamo Minsk (Minsk, Belarus)	Minsk Dynamo		Logo has a buffalo that looks like the old Sabres logo
CSKA Moscow	Central Red Army	Ilya Bryzgalov, Pavel Datsyuk, Alexander Radulov, Anton Volchenkov, GM Sergei Fedorov	If you're a fan of the Yankees, Heat, or Manchester United, then this is your team.
Spartak Moscow	Moscow Spartacus	Oleg Petrov	Think of all the fun yelling, “I am Spartacus!”
Atlant Moscow Oblast	Moscow Atlas	Alexei Kovalev, Nikolay Zherdev	Argos, Titans fans, you Greek mythology teams have to stick together
Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod	Nizhny Novgorod Torpedo	Robert Nillson (son of Kent)	Wasn't the Torpedo supposed to be a strategy that would beat the neutral-zone trap?
Lokomotiv Yaroslavl	Yaroslavl Locomotive	Niklas Hagman, Staffan Kronwall, Curtis Sanford, Viktor Kozlov	Seriously, it's easy to cheer for this team after last year's plane crash

Eastern Conference

Team Name	In English that would be...	People you might recognize	Reason to cheer for them
Traktor Chelyabinsk	Chelyabinsk Tractor (but have a polar bear on the logo)	Andrei Kostitsyn	That's some hard core agricultural dedication: even teams on our prairies aren't named after farming equipment
Ak Bars Kazan	Kazan Snow Leopards		Mac fans, this is your team!
HC Yugra	Don't have a nickname, but their mascot is a mammoth		The mascot is because mammoths are often found nearby; sort of a counterpoint to the Nashville Predators
Metallurg Magnitogorsk	Magnitogorsk Metallurgists (or “Steelers,” if you prefer)	Evgeni Malkin, Oleg Tverdovsky, Coach Paul Maurice	“Magnitogorsk” just sounds cool
Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk	Nizhnekamsk Petrochemists		If you think about it, their name is sort of like “Oilers”
Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg	Yekaterinburg Motorists		“Motorists” may not seem like an intimidating name, but keep in mind that we're talking about people driving Ladas through Russian winters.
Barys Astana (Astana, Kazakhstan)	Astana Leopards	Dustin Boyd, Nigel Dawes	If you saw Borat, you probably owe them one. Also, likely the only hockey team on earth with Arabic script on their uniform.
Amur Khabarovsk	Khabarovsk Amur (Amur is a local river)		In Eastern Russia, near the Pacific. So if you're a fan of one of the NHL's Pacific teams, this may be as close as you get.
Metallurg Novokuznetsk	Novokuznetsk Metallurgists	Chris Simon, Brent Sopel	“Metallurgists” is apparently Russia's “Roughriders”
Sibir Novosibirsk	Novosibirsk Siberians		In high school, we had an exchange program with Novosibirsk
Avangard Omsk	Omsk Vanguard	Alexander Frolov	“Vanguard,” they sound like a band of superheroes
Salavat Yulaev Ufa	Ufa Salavat Yulaev (Salavat Yulaev was a local hero, apparently)	Oleg Saprykin	Seems weird having a whole team of UFA's

Read This, Featuring Manuals

I saw a couple of weird things on the road today.  One was a driver stopped at red light holding her door open for the entire duration of the light.  As far as I could tell, this was just to let the smoke from her cigarette out of the car.  And - to go back to a previous rant - it was a convertible.  So if it was that important to her, she could have just dropped the top.  Yes, it was a little chilly today, but hey, if you're going to hold the door open...

The other thing I noticed was I got passed by a guy driving a Volkswagen GTI.  It was one of those guys who was driving Really Fast, and nearly rear-ended a parked courier van while trying to pass me on the right.  Fortunately he thought better of it and waited to pass me on the left.  Albeit in a hospital zone.

As often happens, for all his Really Fast driving, we both kept stopping at traffic lights, so he ultimately never got more than a car length in front of me.  That stuck in my mind because every time we started going again, his car rolled back a few inches.  Not enough that he might hit me, but enough to make it clear that he was driving a manual. 

I know I'll have to give up much of my car-guy cred for admitting this, but I've never driven a manual transmission.  Thus, I don't know how hard it really is to start on an uphill, but the impression I had was that it wouldn't cause that much trouble, at least on the modest incline we were driving.  So I'm assuming that either: he'd bought this street-racer car that he didn't know how to drive properly, or he was letting it roll back just to make sure everyone knew he wasn't one of these losers driving an automatic.  I could believe either one.

Personally, I would like to learn to drive a stick-shift.  Aside from regaining that street cred I just gave up, it would be nice to avoid that $1,000 or so added on to any new car prices.  Trouble is, I don't know how a grown adult goes about learning the skill.  I can't exactly go back to driver's ed.  I guess I'll just have to hope my ability to use manual transmissions in video games will transfer to real life.

For Once, I Can Relate To Yankees Fans

Canada was knocked out of World Cup qualifying this week.  Though "knocked out" hardly does the 8-1 loss justice.  Normally after Canada plays a major game in Central America I come away angry at biased officiating, but in this game the ref didn't have to offer any help.  It's not really a setback in this one cycle of World Cup qualification, rather it's a setback with multiplicative effects.

The dirty little secret of Canadian soccer is that there is no such thing as Canadian soccer.  Very few people become fans or players of the game in any serious fashion purely based on things that happen in Canada.  Most of them (myself included) become involved in the sport because their family has close ties to another country where the sport is more popular.  On the one hand, that provides a nice shortcut to popularising the game here, but it also provides a few obstacles to getting a competitive national team:

• A small number pool of people to draw on for potential players
• Many potential national team players qualify to play for other countries too
• Canadian fans are often outnumbered by ex-pat fans of the visiting team in home games.

Humiliating losses like the one in Honduras make all these worse: The reputation as an embarrassing team prompts players to chose to represent other countries.  Feeling the team is a lost cause discourages fans from supporting the team.  Without playing high profile games, it's hard to inspire the next generation of players

It also provides support for the many in the sports media who just shrug, say we just don't have the talent, and go back to analysing the minutiae of hockey. Much as there is an obvious talent gap, I'm not sure that's our immediate stumbling block.

To take the recent game as an example: previous to the debacle in Honduras, we tied (and nearly beat) the same team in Toronto. When a team plays to a tie at home, then gets annihilated on the road, lack of talent isn't the main cause.  I don't want to sound like I'm setting up recently-resigned coach Stephen Hart as a scapegoat. It just sets up my long-time complaint about Canada's soccer program: whenever our hockey team plays a game against a country that doesn't have much of a hockey tradition, we usually see that they have a Canadian coach. But for some reason, we never seem to take the hint ourselves. 

We're going to have to admit that this is a problem we'll need help from outside to fix.  Ironically, even though our soccer culture comes from other countries, we keep looking inwards for our coaching.

Lockout II: The Slowening

The National Hockey League season was supposed to have started by now, but their ongoing lockout has prevented that.  Personally, I'm not too bothered; my interest in hockey has waned over the years, and I've been mainly paying attention to the sport only because it's pretty much impossible for a sports fan in Canada to ignore it.  No hockey hasn't bothered me: as long as football and baseball are still going, I'm happy with them.  Along with occasionally enjoying the schadenfreude I always get from watching NHL management in action.

But things often get in the way of watching the NHL shooting itself in the foot: reporters, analysts, and other fans.  This being Canada, everyone is compelled to talk about the hockey labour dispute, even if they don't understand it.  Though come to think of it, that's true of hockey itself, too.

Sports business can be an interesting topic: because it's dealing with a very public and familiar business, it's often easier to relate to than some of the more esoteric industries out there.  But it can be pretty annoying too: people have a lot of emotions wrapped up in the subject, so they often lack any objectivity.  And of course there's the sports journalists.  Sports reporters aren't exactly the sharpest pencils in the newsroom to begin with, and every time there's a work-stoppage they're forced to report on a subject they have no experience with.

Everyone in and out of the media end up spouting the same myths, misconceptions and unrealistic solutions over and over.   So I'll do my part and try to counter them here:

This is a strike

A strike is when workers try to force negotiations by refusing to work.  A lockout is when management tries to force negotiations by refusing to let the workers work.  This and the last NHL work-stoppage were lockouts.

 

The players are looking for more money

I'm still surprised how many people jump to this conclusion.  Sure, we're constantly hearing about escalating athletes' salaries, but in both this and the last labour dispute, the players would have been more than happy just to keep what they already had.  Admittedly, one could argue that with the state of the game's finances, trying to keep the status quo is just as selfish as trying to get more.

This is all about greed

I hate greed as much as the next guy, but it's not quite like that.  The fact is this isn't about grabbing for more money; it's really about dividing the money that they already have.  Fans are often (justifiably) angry about how high player salaries have gotten, but remember: if the players didn't make that big money, it would be the owners making it. As silly as it sounds for people to make millions playing a game, I think everyone would agree it would seem even more unfair for an owner to get that money.  Which is related to...

High salaries lead to high ticket prices

To understand this, imagine that tonight all the players are visited by the ghosts of sports past, present and future, and wake up tomorrow as changed people.  They demand that they make nothing more than the average person.  The owners (who just dreamt of seat licenses or whatever sports owners dream of) are more than happy to massively reduce everyone's salaries.

What do you suppose the owners would do then?  Many would answer: lower ticket prices, say from $100 to $1, now that their expenses have been greatly reduced.  But why would they do that?  They know that there are 20,000 people in town willing to spend $100 to see the game.  If they can sell 20,000 tickets at $100, they'll do that, even if their expenses are much lower.  

The truth is, the causality goes the other way:  Ticket prices don't cause higher salaries; high ticket prices enable high salaries.

If the owners don't want to lose money, they shouldn't sign players to such huge contracts

The trouble is, the owners are in a Catch-22: if they spend big on players, they'll lose money because their expenses are too high.  If they don't spend big on players, they'll be perennially unsuccessful, and lose money because their revenue is too low.  If salaries are determined by a free market, the only ways around this conundrum are: have universal rules limiting spending (such as a salary cap) or live with inequality and uncompetitive teams.

The owners should just agree to stop giving out big contracts

There's a word for that: collusion.  (And it's illegal.)